The Avatar mountains — sandstone pillars lost in cloud
Zhangjiajie National Forest Park contains the most otherworldly landscape in China — thousands of sandstone pillars rising 200 metres from the forest floor, shrouded in cloud and connected by vertiginous glass walkways. James Cameron used satellite imagery of these pillars as the direct inspiration for the floating mountains of Pandora in Avatar. Beyond the park, the Tujia minority people maintain a culture of wooden stilt houses, bamboo crafts, and a fierce homemade grain liquor called tujiajiu.
The Wulingyuan area was inhabited by the Tujia people for millennia before Han Chinese settlement began in earnest during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). The geological formations — quartzite sandstone pillars formed by 380 million years of erosion — were virtually unknown outside Hunan province until the area was designated China's first national forest park in 1982. UNESCO added it to the World Heritage List in 1992 as part of the Wulingyuan Scenic Area. The park's international profile surged after 2009, when Avatar's release prompted Zhangjiajie authorities to officially rename one pillar '…